Mondays at 3 p.m.
September 9 through December 2
Lectures by Carol CloverPFA and the UC Berkeley Film Studies Program are pleased to copresent a film-lecture course open to the public as space permits. Lectures by Carol Clover, Professor of Rhetoric and Scandinavian, precede the films.
The courtroom drama is one of the most popular plot types in English-language film: there are trial melodramas, trial thrillers, trial documentaries, trial westerns, trial cartoons, trial science fiction, and even trial musicals. What is it about Anglo-American legal procedure that lends itself so readily to entertainment, especially moving-image forms? In this lecture course we concern ourselves with how cinema represents trials; what it shows and doesn't show; what social topics it takes up and doesn't take up; what legal issues are of interest; and the theatrical dimensions of trials: demeanor and lie detection, the jury, paranoia, confession, circumstantial evidence, and cameras in the courtroom.
-Carol Clover
Screenings and lectures are held in the PFA Theater, Bancroft @ Bowditch. We recommend advance tickets, which are, as always, available at the PFA box office, or charge-by-phone (510-642-5249).
Schedule for September and October
September 9
Anatomy of a Murder
(Otto Preminger, U.S., 1959)
September 16
The Passion of Joan of Arc
(Carl Theodor Dreyer, France, 1928)
September 23
Let Him Have It
(Peter Medak, U.K., 1991)
September 30
The Kiss
(Jacques Feyder, U.S., 1929)
with shorts Falsely Accused (U.S., 1908) and The Unwritten Law (U.S., 1907)
October 7
Witness for the Prosecution
(Billy Wilder, U.S., 1957)
October 14
Young Mr. Lincoln
(John Ford, U.S., 1939)
October 21
Class Action
(Michael Apted, U.S., 1990)
October 28
Compulsion
(Richard Fleischer, U.S., 1959)
